Most economists have fond memories of applied labor classes where the professor would teach the following detective puzzle. If a 45 year old in calendar year 2008 buys a Prius, what have we learned about the relative importance of birth cohort effects, calendar year effects versus age effects in determining car demand?

The answer to the riddle revolves around the following exciting arithmetic.

In 2008, a person who is 45 years old was born in 1963. So there are 3 different factors potentially driving behavior;

1. Being 45 years old (the age effect)
2. Having been born in 1963 (the birth cohort effect)
3. Living in 2008 (the calendar year effect) ---

The trouble is the identity that 2008 - 45 = 1963.
so at a point in time you can't tease out all 3 effects' impact.

This is frustrating because one can tell plausible stories of the role of all 3 in determining important consumer behavior. Now that this boring lecture is over, please read my recent media quote to see a funny example in the real world.

Greens and the Summer of Love

Urban Economists continue to debate the future of the Rust Belt. Ed Glaeser has earned much praise from upstate New Yorkers for his "kind words" about Buffalo's fate. See http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_buffalo_ny.html.

Other economists have also highlighted the challenges that cold Rust Belt cities face. Bruce Sacerdote paper on the Rust Belt

The New York Times is becoming a more optimistic newspaper. Perhaps the end isn't near afterall. What I find interesting about this Booster piece about Providence Rhode Island is the synergies between Brown University and Providence. Brown is becoming a more serious research university at the same time that Providence is improving. Which way does the causality go? Is it now easier for Brown to recruit star faculty like Ken Chay because it is a "consumer city"? Or as Brown has grown richer it is investing more in the city and being a good neighbor? Yale for years has had to wrestle with this issue of "playing nice".

The bigger issue here is the role that major Universities play in helping a city's image and its actual day to day quality of life in terms of culture, restaurants, book stores, young people walking around and nerds. Richard Florida's thesis on the creative class may be partially at work here but the true "exogenous" institution drawing the creative through a social multiplier effect is the major university.

If this thesis is wrong, then you name a fun , hip city that doesn't have a great university. I can think of downtown San Francisco as one counter-example but Berkeley is close.


February 27, 2008
Square Feet

Providence Begins to See Its Future Around the Corner
By DONNA PAUL

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — This is a city of 25 diverse neighborhoods, many with distinctive New England character, but it is Downcity that is the urban core and the city’s historical heart.

Downcity is centered on Westminster Street, an urban thoroughfare lined with a cohesive ensemble of 18th- and 19th-century neo-Classical-style and Italianate mercantile buildings, made of brick, limestone and cast iron.

Until the middle of the 20th century, it was a vibrant shopping district, perhaps the most prominent in the state, whose residents used to talk about going “downcity” rather than “downtown.” It offered chic clothing shops, jewelers, tailors, salons and a number of local department stores: Shepard’s, Peerless and Gladdings.

But once the venerable tenants left, the buildings were vacant for years. Today, different kinds of stores are opening here. Cheese shops, design stores and restaurants are setting up in these stately buildings, hoping first-floor retail spaces will capture the attention of new residents in the area.

There has long been talk of a renaissance in Downcity, which covers a 36-block area, about a quarter mile long and a third of a mile wide, and progress has been made.

“In 1990, you could have thrown a bowling ball down Westminster Street,” said Thomas Deller, director of planning and development for the city and executive director of the Providence Redevelopment Agency.

“Everything in Downcity continues to evolve,” he said. “What happens in good city planning is the ability to keep a pulse of what’s happening, to make sure that the plan is clear about what you want to achieve.” He added: “Here’s a city that has figured it out.”

Arnold B. Chace, 60, owner, president and chief executive of Cornish Associates, a real estate development firm, has been a seminal figure in the redevelopment of Downcity.

Today, there are residential lofts, a bookstore, a cafe, a college library, stores, a wine shop, restaurants, arts organizations, theater companies and a hotel in Downcity. Many occupy buildings owned by Cornish.

According to Mr. Chace, Cornish Associates has acquired eight buildings since 1991, paying as little as $3 to $10 a square foot. To date, his company has committed $80 million to restore them.

As Mr. Chace, who is known as Buff, tells it, his interest in Downcity dates to a day in 1991 when he was looking at buildings that had been foreclosed, accompanied by his twins, who were then 7 years old. “I was explaining to them about what had happened here, and my daughter asked me, ‘Why don’t you do something about it?’ ” Mr. Chace said.

That elicited a response. “The very heart of our city was in disrepair, and I became committed to rebuilding that heart,” he said.

He helped to persuade the mayor, Vincent Cianci, and the Providence Foundation, a nonprofit group that works on redevelopment, to sponsor a five-day program in 1991 to analyze the downtown and develop a master plan to revitalize its core. A leading participant was the architect and New Urbanism advocate Andrés Duany.

There were two more such planning sessions involving Mr. Duany, in 1994 and 2005, and a master plan was adopted by the city after the 1994 meeting.

For the revitalization of Downcity, Mr. Chace has been guided by the principles laid out in the plan: walkable streets; continuous retailing, with no offices on ground floors; and mixed use.

But the effort to attract retailers was undercut when the huge Providence Place Mall, with about 1.3 million square feet and 170 stores, including Nordstrom and Macy’s, opened about a half-mile away in August 1999.

Cornish Associates shifted its focus to housing. It has created 196 loft apartments by renovating the eight buildings. About 95 percent of the apartments are occupied, roughly a fifth by artists. The lofts range from 550 to 2,700 square feet and rent for $500 to $3,000 a month.

None of this could have happened without significant tax credits. “It took a major effort, changes in zoning, and getting legislation passed to make this work,” Mr. Deller said. Federal and state historic tax credits return 20 and 30 percent of the total rehabilitation expenses respectively to the developer of a project in a historic district.

In 1999, additional incentives to attract artists were passed, including a proposal pushed by Mr. Cianci that artwork created in the district would not be subject to sales tax, nor would artists be subject to state income tax.

Three universities — the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island School of Design, and Johnson & Wales — own property in Downcity. There are also a number of arts organizations, including the Trinity Repertory Company, the Providence Performing Arts Center and the Black Repertory Theater.

AS220, a nonprofit artist group, currently owns and operates two buildings. Umberto Crenca founded the group at 220 Weybosset Street in 1985; the name, short for Artist Space 220, is supposed to evoke P. S. 1, the contemporary art center in Queens.

He began in a single room, but in 1993, Lucie Searle, a developer, assisted the organization in buying a 22,000-square-foot- building for $400,000. A second building was bought in 2005 using tax credits. AS220 is about to buy its third building for more than $1 million.

Retail spaces have been slower to fill, and this is a problem in Downcity. “Critical mass must be created for an infrastructure of services to come in,” Mr. Chace said, citing dry cleaners, groceries and drugstores as the kinds of businesses that are needed.

In 2003, Mr. Chace offered extraordinary leases to his first retail tenants. “I allowed tenants to enter deals without rent, and I took a percentage of sales,” he said. He now lists annual asking rents of around $20 a square foot. At Providence Place Mall, the annual rents are about $75 or $80 a square foot.

The attractive rents have helped attract independent shop owners. Heejun Arms, 38, opened Elsa Arms, a store selling designer clothing, one year ago on Westminster Street. She was drawn to the high ceilings. “I couldn’t find this anywhere else,” Ms. Arms said.

George Germon and Johanne Killeen, prominent Providence chefs who own the restaurant Al Forno, which has operated for 28 years in another part of the city, are about to create a new venture in Downcity. Their restaurant-wine bar, called Tini, is to open in April.

Michael Corso, 37, who has worked for Cornish Associates, opened Tazza Caffe in late 2003, signing a 10-year lease. His goal was to create a European style neighborhood espresso bar. “We have a dynamic bunch coming in here: artists, professionals, politicians,” he said.

David N. Cicilline, the current mayor, is optimistic about Downcity. “People are living here for the first time in a long time,” he said.

Mr. Crenca, the artist, notes there is more to be done, however. “We are at a very critical juncture,” he said. “Others need to step up to the plate.”

Can the old learn from the young? As a younger man, I worked at Columbia University and had the opportunity to teach some very gifted students. This one student makes some good points. The "Big" issue here is what is a "green" lifestyle? How do we know it when we see it?


Sustainability Beyond ‘Green Chic’ and Solar Panels
By Julie DeVries

Created 02/24/2008 - 8:52pm

When I was in high school in New Hampshire, the Environmental Action Committee, of which I was a part, hosted a guest who went by the name of “Sunweaver.” His beard was long and scraggly, and he wore a Dr. Seuss-shaped hat of rainbow colors. I liked him immediately, not only for his comical appearance, but also for his effortless idealism. When he was not traveling the country on his solar electric bus, he was selling renewable energy systems out of his “energy showroom” in Northwood, New Hampshire. He told us that he routinely saw customers with inefficient appliances looking for a quick and flashy fix in alternative energy. Sunweaver told these people that they must first conserve—change their ordinary appliances to efficient ones, change their light bulbs to compact fluorescents, and change their lifestyles by cutting down on consumption and waste. When they had completed these tasks, if they so wished, they could come back and buy a solar panel.

Sunweaver would be ridiculed in New York City. He would probably be referred to as a crazy hippy with no economic sense. And while it is true that we do not all have to drive a solar electric bus around the country and wear rainbow hats to live sustainably, Sunweaver’s message should not be abandoned just because we don’t support his lifestyle.

Lately, as the reality of global climate change has become universally accepted, green is in fashion. The candidates for the 2008 presidential elections play up the environmental and the economical wonders of “green-collar jobs.” Many magazines have taken to writing issues like Vanity Fair’s “Green Issue,” which features celebrities and their flashy renewable energy-powered mansions. The sales of organic food, Prius hybrid cars, and solar panels are at an all-time high. But in this green-crazed country, one must stop and wonder: does a Prius plus a bag of Pirate’s Booty really equal sustainability?

Buying goods labeled “environmentally friendly” does not necessarily insure that you are helping the earth—in reality, finding the best way to live a sustainable lifestyle in a specific area is quite complex. For example, the effectiveness of a solar panel depends on the orientation of the home and the amount of sunlight the area receives. In all seasonal areas of the United States, it is more cost-effective to replace old appliances with energy-efficient ones at about $100 per appliance than it is to buy a solar panel, which generally costs a couple thousand dollars, depending on the size of the home. Unfortunately, many Americans choose to buy solar panels anyway because they are conspicuous and “green chic.”

Similarly, buying a Prius is not always the right path. It is important to remember that every new Prius bought is a new Prius made, and making new cars takes energy and therefore burns fossil fuels, which release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It makes much more sense to take an old diesel car and run it on biodiesel, which can be made from renewable sources like vegetable oil and emits 60 percent less carbon dioxide than a regular engine. Using biodiesel takes more commitment than buying a new Prius, however, for biodiesel stations are still hard to come by and, although the oil is simple to make at home, using homemade fuel usually interferes with the warranty. Even if you cannot make the commitment to biodiesel, it is important to keep in mind while making any purchase that buying new goods is generally worse for the earth than recycling old ones.

I am not advocating a lifestyle in which Americans all live in tents by candlelight wearing their grandparents’ hand-me-downs. I strongly believe that conservation does not mean the eradication of human culture. Medicine, art, and education are the very things that conservationists are trying to save—if we destroy the planet, humans and their culture will cease to exist.

No, I am simply suggesting that we take a look at the solutions for climate change and separate those that actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere from those that make people feel fashionably green. Fixing climate change and other environmental issues may result in renewable energy, but renewable energy will never support the unnecessarily lavish lifestyles that Americans lead today. The complexities of conservation might seem insurmountable, but saving the planet really starts with simple changes, changes that are much too slow in coming to this country. Turn off the lights when you leave the room, change all your light bulbs to compact fluorescents, get a power strip and turn it off when it is not in use, take the stairs, take shorter showers, and be aware and informed about the way you live and the impact it has on your planet and your future. You don’t have to be Sunweaver to minimize your emissions, and you don’t have to be able to afford a solar panel—you just have to care.

The author is a Columbia College first-year. She is an EcoRep.


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Source URL:
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/29516

We know that Harvard has the largest endowment in the U.S and that Princeton has the largest endowment per student and we know that UCLA has the most charming Professors, but which university has the smallest carbon per-capita footprint of all? Which school is being the best "global citizen"? With everyone talking about "carbon footprints", here are a couple of links.

Which Universities will be willing to take costly actions to reduce their carbon footprint? similar to Gary Becker's model of discrimination, will universities take some of their endowment income and allocate it to being a "moral company"? Or do they anticipate that with carbon pricing on the horizon that pre-emption is simply good business that also appeals to politically active students?


http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_specter

I am quite impressed by what UC Berkeley has put together here in its analysis of itself. I haven't read through the report yet but I would like to know whether they discuss the marginal cost of different CO2 reduction strategies. For example, at UCLA I have suggested that nobody drive to work by car but instead we give everyone rollerskates. What is the marginal cost (including lost time and accidents) from this suggestion?



UC Berkeley CO2 Footprint Trends

Urban green space is a scarce commodity. At some expense, Boston has increased its supply. Was this money well spent? Who are the real winners from this public investment? The city is "greener" and a little less congested because of it. Center city land owners will enjoy a windfall and tourists may have a better walk before they go to Legal Seafood for lunch. Myself? I moved from Boston to Los Angeles and I will only gain from the "existence value".


February 24, 2008
Boston Has High Hopes Now That the Dig Is Done
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

BOSTON — In the gloom of winter, it is hard to see potential amid the strips of brown grass and pavement that lie where this city’s hulking elevated highway used to be.

But with the $15 billion construction project known as the Big Dig officially over as of last month, the promised transformation of downtown Boston — not just its traffic patterns but also its look, its feel, its very essence — finally seems within reach.

Expectations are high, and for good reason. The Big Dig drained not only public coffers but also the psyche of Boston as it replaced the traffic-choked highway with sleek tunnels over nearly two decades. The construction forced hellish traffic jams and proved faulty, with the new tunnels springing hundreds of leaks and worse. Four workers died during the construction, and in 2006, concrete ceiling panels in one tunnel collapsed and killed a woman in a car.

Where the highway used to be is now a milelong green space with benches, fountains and fledgling trees ready to welcome pedestrians come spring. Where the highway cut off waterfront neighborhoods from the rest of the city, there is now a clear view to Boston Harbor, the Italian North End, the New England Aquarium and the wharfs that surround it.

Yet problems persist. The Big Dig was one of the most expensive public works projects in the nation’s history, and money for finishing touches is scarce. The real estate downturn has threatened development along the corridor, and the new parks, skinny and hemmed in by busy three-lane surface roads, present their own hurdles.

Lackluster fund-raising and other obstacles have stalled plans for four new buildings along the greenway — a museum, a cultural center, a visitors center and a Y.M.C.A. — and a glassed-in garden planned for its southern tip has been scrapped.

While the project was a godsend for drivers — a study by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found it cut the average trip through Boston to 2.8 minutes from 19.5 — residents are looking to the $100 million worth of aesthetic changes for more proof the agony was worth it. Advocates of the project, meanwhile, are pleading for more patience.

“Everything is so supercharged around this project,” said Anthony Flint, director of public affairs for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a research group in Cambridge. “But it’s a delicate balance. You want to think of this as the signature space of Boston, but at the same time you have to allow it to evolve.”

That evolution has definitely begun.

Along the new park space, called the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, buildings that long ago sealed off windows overlooking the highway are reopening them. New housing, shops and offices are in the works. One former warehouse has been renamed Greenway Place Condominiums, with luxury lofts that start around $800,000.

“It’s going to be way better, I think, than anything I dreamed of,” said Frederick Salvucci, a former Massachusetts transportation secretary who helped conceive of the Big Dig in the 1970s and championed it through multiple delays and cost overruns.

Mr. Salvucci and others hope the new corridor, replacing what he called “a big ugly slash in the city,” will eventually rival cherished public spaces like Las Ramblas in Barcelona and the Embarcadero in San Francisco.

The city considered it a major victory when, in 1991, the state decided that 75 percent of the land created as a result of the Big Dig must be left as open space. But while the greenway is divided into four parks totaling 10.5 acres, all are limited in design and function because they are built over tunnels and surrounded by traffic.

The southernmost park, bordering Chinatown, has a red gateway at its entrance, fan-shaped paving stones and bamboo plantings. The next, which greets commuters arriving at South Station, was supposed to have the glassed-in garden but now will be regular garden space with little pavement.

The next parcel, facing the aquarium, has a circular plaza, a large fountain and tall glass lights that glow purple at night. And the northernmost park, connecting downtown with the North End’s famous restaurants, has tables, chairs and a long, bench-lined pergola that will be covered with vines. More than 1,300 trees have been planted along the greenway.

The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, a nonprofit group created to oversee the greenway, is raising money for its upkeep and considering what kind of activities would best suit the space. Summertime festivals for children, morning yoga classes and organized walks through the parks are likely.

Jerold Kayden, a professor of urban planning and design at Harvard, said that the parks lacked boldness and creativity and that the corridor remained “an urban void.” It might have been more interesting, Professor Kayden said, to leave the highway intact as an elevated park like the planned High Line, formerly a railway, on the West Side of Manhattan.

“One would be hard-pressed to say this is a creative, cohesive, singular public space that will redefine the city of Boston,” he said. “And that is too bad, when you have that much space.”

Others say the space merely needs to evolve, and that in time, the greenway and the development that rises alongside it will have the same impact that filling in the Back Bay — formerly tidewater flats along the Charles River, now one of Boston’s most upscale neighborhoods — did more than a century ago.

“I think you’ll see these spaces realizing the same kind of historic contribution that the Boston Common and the Public Garden have made,” said Richard Dimino, president of A Better City, a business group that has closely monitored the Big Dig. “But I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Some who live and work along the greenway are worried they will be priced out by the upscale development. In Chinatown, others say that a planned 27-story residential tower will threaten their neighborhood’s character. And some vendors at the Haymarket, a hectic, scruffy produce market, are worried they will no longer be welcome.

But Alan Caparella, whose family has owned Mother Anna’s in the North End for 70 years, said the greenway was a boon for the restaurant, which borders it.

“People are finally starting to come back into the city that wouldn’t come in here five, six, eight years ago because of the Big Dig,” Mr. Caparella said. “Now, if you go out on the patio on a nice summer day, you’re looking at a beautiful skyline. Before, we were looking at construction. You couldn’t open the doors. We’d open the door for half an hour and see dust settle on the bar and the glasses and the white tablecloths.”

He added: “Now I’m looking at park. I’m looking out the window right now at people walking back and forth to City Hall and Faneuil Hall, and we’re right in the middle of it.”

I entered the University of Chicago in 1988 intending to become a macroeconomist. I quickly transitioned to another field of study called applied micro. But, I always respected the Chicago Macro Stars. Starting today, I have a new favorite macro-economist. Forget my Chicago days of Lucas and Prescott, Charles Plosser is back. We were taught his real business cycle stuff and those Rochester hits are still somewhere in the back of my mind. Now that he is a voice of reason in Big Ben Bernanke's War Cabinet, I really like what he is saying. As a Los Angeles renter with some cash in the bank, I am a personal fan of higher interest rates. It looks to me that the Philadelphia Fed's President is going to slow down Keynesian Ben and help me out.

New York Times today

"Charles I. Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, echoed that view, saying in a speech that “we cannot be confident that a slow-growing economy in early 2008 will by itself reduce inflation.”

“As we learned from the experience of the 1970s,” Mr. Plosser added, “once the public loses confidence in the Fed’s commitment to price stability, it is very costly to the economy for the Fed to regain that confidence.”

In a telephone interview, Mr. Plosser explained that the Fed seemed to be making progress against inflation in the first half of 2007 but he started to become more worried during the second half.

“Since the summer almost all of the measures of inflation that we look at have begun to accelerate again, and in some cases pretty sharply,” Mr. Plosser said. “Perhaps the inflationary pressures are more broad-based than just energy.”"

So, I'm encouraged that the Fed may worry about its "stagflation" enough to slowdown the interest rate convergence to zero. This will help to achieve my goal of lowering home prices.

Given that this is supposed to be an environmental blog, I thought I would post this link --- it is pretty interesting stuff;
The Causes and Consequences of the Demand for Green Lawns

If we could get away from the social norm of everyone wanting a green lawn then we could save some natural resources. Where did this norm come from? How do we get rid of a "bad norm"? Where are the evolutionary theorists when we need one?

Will your grandchildren have a higher quality of life than we do? Most economists would say yes to this. Would most ecologists say no? Are the two answers linked? If the "capitalist" economists help to convince the rest of the world "don't worry, be happy" does this raise the likelihood of ecological disaster? Here is a website that blames the Chicago Boys for some of the challenges we face.
Some Peak Oil Doom and Gloom

Why do I post this? I'm a "two handed" intellectual and I'm sometimes willing to listen to positions that I don't believe in. Plus , it is funny!

In a global deal on limiting greenhouse gases, we need all the major nations (including China, India and the U.S) to participate. While an economist will start to babble about participation constraints and then will declare that he will solve a pareto problem subject to these incentive compatability constraints --- what does this actually mean? How do you get to "yes"? We all know that if there was such a "Kyoto Greenhouse" deal, then the "magic" of incentives would encourage short run substitution and long run innovation and the carbon intensity of the world economy would fall sharply.

This dude at MIT is at least trying to think about the participation issue. The problem with this guy's thesis is he doesn't ask whether his carrots and sticks mechanism is credible. Who will be the world's environmental cop patrolling the beat and punishing those who have been naughty? Does he believe that the Jedi Order from Star Wars will flyin to make things right? Who are the norm enforcers in this case?

Will China use its military power to enforce world environmental compliance?

So to repeat my point, I'm worried about cheap talk here and a lack of credible threats. In the subgame once a nation has emitted too much, who will deal out the enforcement? Won't there be a free rider problem at that point; anticipating that in the subgame that a polluter won't be punished encourages more ex-ante pollution and this dude's optimistic vision unravels.

My punchline; The world needs Arnold S to run the United Nations with a Green Uzi aimed at all "evil".


MIT expert: How to toughen up environmental treaties

Sarah H. Wright, News Office
February 16, 2008

The Kyoto Protocol is one of more than 100 global environmental treaties negotiated over the past 40 years to address pollution, fisheries management, ocean dumping and other problems. But according to MIT Professor Lawrence Susskind, an expert in resolving complex environmental disputes, few of the agreements have done more than slow the pace of ecological damage, due to lack of ratification by key countries, insufficient enforcement and inadequate financial support.

To give the pacts bite--not just bark--Susskind is proposing a series of reforms that include economic penalties for countries that fail to meet the treaties' targets. Susskind will outline a program to make global environmental treaties more effective and treaty-makers more accountable in a presentation Saturday, Feb. 16, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.

The reforms he has in mind include engaging civil societies, not just governments, in drafting and enforcing global environmental treaties; offering incentives for countries that ratify treaties and comply with their terms; and establishing more meaningful timetables and targets, along with economic penalties.

Penalties for non-compliance with environmental treaties should hit nations hard--in their pocketbooks, says Susskind.

"All the multilateral banks and lending institutions, the World Trade Organization and the UN agencies should require compliance with global environmental treaty provisions as a prerequisite for loans or participation in any of their activities," he will urge in his AAAS talk.

Susskind, the Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at MIT, will draw in part from his own experience working with the G-77 on the Climate Change Convention. He has published 20 books including "Environmental Diplomacy" (Oxford), "Transboundary Environmental Negotiation" (Jossey-Bass), and the award-winning "Consensus Building Handbook" (Sage).

Susskind will also participate in an AAAS panel on global knowledge and information to be held Sunday, Feb. 17. He will present a strategy for resolving information conflicts.

Susskind is head of MIT's Environmental Policy and Planning Group and co-director of the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative (scienceimpact.mit.edu). As founder of the Consensus Building Institute (www.cbuilding.org), a not-for-profit organization that provides dispute resolution services in complicated public policy disputes around the world, Susskind has helped to mediate more than 50 environmental disputes and worked with a variety of UN agencies.

It appears that the media is devoting more and more attention to environmental issues. What has been displaced? Flattering articles about economists and the fascinating lives we live? Or perhaps another article about Bernanke's Keynesian adventures or Larry Summers' charm?

Here are two interesting environmental pieces in the news.

1. Michael Specter’s piece ‘Big Foot’ from the February 25th issue of The New Yorker on newsstands tomorrow. In Measuring Carbon Emissions, It’s Easy to Confuse Morality and Science.

2. Today's New York Times asks the right question. In this age of "green products", how do we know a green product when we see one? This new lightbulb conserves on energy consumption but when it dies the mercury contained in it may leak out. In the absence of an energineering fix, this could pose a disposal issue. On net, how "green" is this product?


February 17, 2008
Editorial
That Newfangled Light Bulb
Across the world, consumers are being urged to stop buying outdated incandescent light bulbs and switch to new spiral fluorescent bulbs, which use about 25 percent of the energy and last 10 times longer. In Britain, there is a Ban the Bulb movement. China is encouraging the change. And the United States Congress has set new energy efficiency standards that will make Edison’s magical invention obsolete by the year 2014.
Now, the question is how to dispose of these compact fluorescent bulbs once they break or quit working.
Unlike traditional light bulbs, each of these spiral bulbs has a tiny bit of a dangerous toxin — around five milligrams of mercury. And although one dot of mercury might not seem so bad, almost 300 million compact fluorescents were sold in the United States last year. That is already a lot of mercury to throw in the trash, and the amounts will grow ever larger in coming years.
Businesses and government recyclers need to start working on more efficient ways to deal with that added mercury. Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is raising the cry about the moment when millions of these light bulbs start landing in landfills or incinerators all at once. The pig in the waste pipeline, she calls it.
Even when warned, public officials are never great at planning. The Environmental Protection Agency now focuses mostly on the disposal of one bulb at a time. If you break a fluorescent bulb, there is no need to call in the hazmat team, the agency says. Just clean it up quickly with paper (no vacuuming or brooms), keep the kids away and open the window for a 15-minute douse of fresh air. Tuck the debris into a plastic sack and, if there is no special recycling nearby, discard it in the regular trash.
Interestingly, one of the main reasons to use these bulbs is that when they cut down on energy use, they also cut down on mercury emissions from power plants. And even with their mercury innards, these bulbs are still better for the environment than the old ones.
For all that good, the dangers are real and growing. It is time to find more efficient ways of recycling these fluorescents or, better yet, to invent light bulbs that don’t leave a toxic hangover.

UCLA's Westwood is usually a pretty intellectual place. But as I walked back to my house close to Westwood Village, I walked past a bar sign claiming that Playboy Playmates were there celebrating the NBA All-Star Game. There was also a radio station's truck parked outside and a guy who sounded a like a DJ yelling into cell phone in a radio voice kind of way that the was the bar to be at this afternoon. Since I am a social scientist, I wanted to see what was going on in there. I looked into the bar and saw three young ladies with platinum hair. They were surrounded by a bunch of dudes. I pointed out this excitement to my wife but then my six year old son asked what was going on in there and at that point we decided to go home.

If you want more details on this good clean fun go here --- Excitement in Westwood, Los Angeles

As exciting as Harvard Square was, I don't remember such thrills in Cambridge, MA.